Skip to main content
Main

Stewed Rabbit

A stew of rabbit pieces cooked with butter, flour, pork fat, vinegar, onions, red pepper, water, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Stewed Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the rabbits into small pieces and pour vinegar over them.

  2. Let the pieces stand for about 2 hours.

  3. Wipe the rabbit pieces dry.

  4. Dip them in flour and salt.

Brown and stew

  1. Fry the rabbit in pork fat until browned.

  2. In the same pan, fry the onion.

  3. Add browned flour, red pepper, water, and spices.

  4. Add the rabbit to the pan.

  5. Let it cook for about 1½ hours.

  6. Stir in the butter before serving.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Rabbit + porktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together832 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Rabbits
Provide the lean meat that is braised until tender in the stewing liquid.
Browned flour
Thickens the cooking liquid and adds a toasted, nutty flavour to the gravy.
Vinegar
Acidity that softens the rabbit meat before cooking and sharpens the finished sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth finish to the gravy when stirred in at the end.
Pork fat
Fat for frying the rabbit, building browned flavour on the meat's surface.

The step that matters

Browning the rabbit in pork fat. Searing the floured pieces until deeply browned builds flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale, under-browned pieces produce a flat-tasting stew and a weaker gravy.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, butter, flour, pork, onion, pepper, vinegar):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, butter, flour, pork, onion, pepper, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

More stewed rabbit recipes

in Milk 8French 4 See all 67 →

You might also like

Pork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesRabbit PattiesRabbit Patties6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes